How Squirrly, the Agency, Helped Rob Level up [Case Study]

04Feb2016

| Last update:
09Mar2016

For Rob, the owner of Renegade Citizen, working with Squirrly, the Agency, turned out to be a game changer.

And since Rob owns a game development blog, there is no better way to show you how we managed to grow a strong, powerful community around his blog than by taking you on a journey meant to showcase all the levels we went through.

We carefully recreated our steps, stumbled upon a nut or two, and this is what came out of it! We played the game. Now, you can read the story:

Level 1: The Quest for More

All great adventures start with a thirst for something more.

Rob McCrady from Renegade Citizen wanted to start building a following for his blog. Rob realized that getting more people to read and engage with his blog was important, as the blog and the community around him would be of great use to him in the future whenever he would launch new mobile games.

When he managed everything, he was able to get some good reactions to his written content because the readers felt like they could really get to know the person behind the blog. There was definitely a lot of potential there.

Level 6: Getting a Team, a Party and a Trusted Guild

Enter the Guild of Squirrlyans, also known as: Squirrly, The Content Marketing Agency. Can you hear the drums? Come on, they’re pretty loud!

So how did things change after Rob got in touch with us? Well, Rob was a single player. Then Squirrly came along and unlocked a multiplayer version of the game.

This version was better and, at this stage of the game, the members of our guild were charged with identifying solid strategies and tactics for the growth of RenegadeCitizen.com

So, we put our game face on.

Levels 7 to 10: Squirrly, the Agency, Aimed for Better Content

It’s important to state that Rob’s blog is not just any blog. It’s a game development blog that dissects marketing and monetization strategies, game mechanics and other related aspects. On top of that, it’s not your average gaming website, so we needed to proceed carefully.

We had to make sure that we perfectly understood the voice of the Renegade Citizen brand and that we were on the same level. This helped us create just the right kind of content.

Also, we knew that Rob’s goal was to attract a long-lasting audience for his blog, so we decided it would be best to write long-form, information-rich articles of over 1.500 words to keep his users engaged.

Turns out we did a pretty good job, as the content was well appreciated and achieved the desired results.

Levels 11 to 15: Multiple Channels Were Tested, but it Was Twitter that Thrived

Rob was happy with the results he got, so together we kept moving onward.

It so happened that the content was now great, so we were able to start building up a Twitter audience. While we promoted the articles from Renegade Citizen on multiple platforms such as Google+ Communities, Facebook Groups and LinkedIn Groups, they were no match for the audience we’ve created for Rob on Twitter.

Rob had under 1.000 followers when he first reached out to us at the begging of May 2015. Now he’s up to 15.400 followers, and counting. That’s a growth of 1.540% in less than a year!

Not that we like to brag, but numbers don’t lie, and we have a visitor target that we reach for each one of his articles. Most of the time, we could honestly just post a link to an article from his Twitter account because that would immediately help us reach the target.

At the end of this level, we’ve made an analysis of his followers’ buyer personas. Here’s what we found:

The buyers personas were 90% accurate, meaning that 90% of his audience were mobile game developers.

10% were other developer types, game designers and gamers.

Also, the audience we’ve build for him by sharing great content on the blog and attracting the right kind of followers clearly set his website apart from others that tackle game development.

That means our approach was spot-on, and Squirrly, the Agency, got another pat on the back. (Man, we love those!)

Levels 16 to 20: Twitter Was Great and Engagement Followed

Website visits were more than welcome and well-appreciated, but what Rob wanted was to attract developers who would progressively engage with him through his blog.

It all started out with great comments made on Twitter by his followers. They were reacting to his posts and to what was written in them. Content Suggestions, feature requests, you name it! They all started happening for Rob.

And soon after Twitter comments started being a thing, the blog comments followed as well. Moreover, the comments he got on his blog articles started getting longer, which meant his readers were really getting involved. That was exciting news!

We also made sure to implement a growth strategy on Facebook and Google+, so that we would reach a larger audience.

Level 21: Not the End – Getting a Taste of reddit and New Things to Come

We’ve been working since Level 15 to get articles on reddit and have them become truly appreciated by the reddit community (not an easy task). That meant we had to think outside the box and bring real value to the people of reddit, not just randomly spam the subreddits.

For that, our thinking hats needed to be on. Good thing we never leave the house without them! Being the determined squirrels that we are, we managed to crack this nut open and now reddit brings in a lot of traffic and engaged visits every time we get something upvoted.

But we didn’t stop there.

We’re now working on a unique, 100% original guide about outsourcing game development tasks, the Renegade Citizen way! We’re hearing those drums again…

This will provide even more value for the mobile game developers community and it will help Rob build an engaged email following as well.

RenegadeCitizen.com is now a thing of its own, and we’re glad to be a part of it. But there’s always another step to take, a next level. We love playing the game so, for us, this is great news!